David Slade to Direct Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere'

I'm a little surprised by the opening box office of Stardust, which only made $9 million over the weekend. The movie was certainly advertised plenty, it features fantasy and pirates and other popular elements and it has received pretty good reviews. Maybe it will do well in the long run thanks to word of mouth, but if it doesn't, I hope its lack of success doesn't affect other Neil Gaiman adaptations. One of these adaptations is Neverwhere, which Gaiman actually wrote a script for back in 2000. In our own Comic-Con interview with Gaiman, the writer revealed some new developments happening with the project and mentioned that a director was very interested in finally bringing it to the big screen. Unfortunately he wouldn't tell us the director's name. But MTV Movies Blog's Jennifer Vineyard was apparently able to get it out of him. According to her, the director of Neverwhere will be David Slade, who made the excellent Sundance sensation Hard Candyand the upcoming vampire pic 30 Days of Night.

Other names mentioned in Vineyard's report include Harvey Weinstein, who may be looking to distribute via The Weinstein Co., and Lisa Henson, who was involved with Gaiman's Mirrormask, which pretty much ruined my love for Jim Henson Productions by utitlizing CG instead of Muppets. Gaiman will do a rewrite of his earlier draft, which is based on a 1996 mini-series he wrote for the BBC. He also wrote a very popular novelization of the series in 1997, and since then, there has also been a Vertigo comic book and a stage production. The story follows a bumbling businessman named Richard Mayhew, who ends up in an alternate dimension world called London Below. While there he must help a girl named Door, who is looking for answers regarding the murder of her family members. Gaiman has a number of other adaptations in development or soon to be in development, including the upcoming animated film Coraline, Interworld, Death: The High Cost of Living, Sandman and hopefully one day Good Omens.